Black American, African American, ADOS, FBA, Soulaan, Gullah Geechee. These names overlap, and people feel strongly about them. Here is what each one means, where it came from, and why the conversation about who is who is happening right now.
A Gullah grandmother in Georgia and a teenager whose parents moved from Nigeria are both Black and both American. Their family stories, and the names they choose, can be very different.
The widest term. It describes people of African descent anywhere in the world, from Lagos to London to Louisiana. It is a race, not an ethnicity, so it covers many different peoples and histories.
Since 2020, most major newsrooms and style guides capitalize it as Black, the same way other groups' names are capitalized.
Americans of African descent. Many descendants of people enslaved in the United States now choose Black American as their own name, because it points to a people and a culture born here rather than to a single country in Africa.
The phrase is older, but it went mainstream in 1988, when Dr. Ramona Edelin explained its meaning to Rev. Jesse Jackson and other Black leaders, and Jackson began using it regularly. The idea was to give descendants of the enslaved a name tied to a homeland, like Irish American or Italian American.
Today it is also used by the children of recent African immigrants, and by the U.S. government as part of its “Black or African American” category. That overlap is a big part of the current conversation about who is who.
Many first and second generation families name the specific country their family came from. A child born in Atlanta to parents from Ghana might say Ghanaian American.
Since 2024, federal forms also ask for more detail inside the Black category, with examples like African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian and Somali.
A name and a political movement that grew out of a hashtag started by Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore in the late 2010s. It refers to descendants of Africans enslaved in what became the United States.
Its main goal is reparations, along with policies aimed at that group specifically. Critics argue some of its rhetoric is anti-immigrant; the movement denies this.
A term coined by commentator Tariq Nasheed in January 2019 for people classified as Black who can trace their lineage to American slavery. Like ADOS, it focuses on lineage and reparations, and it is part of the same heated debate.
A newer name some Black Americans have chosen for themselves as an ethnic group. It was created in 2020 by T-Roy Parks, Maroc Wallace and Dwayne Coleman: Soul for Black American culture, plus A for Autochthonous American, meaning rooted in this land for generations.
Descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved on the rice, indigo and cotton plantations of the coast and Sea Islands. Living in close-knit, isolated communities, they kept more African language, food, crafts and faith than almost any other group in the country, and they speak their own creole language, Gullah. Some families also honor Indigenous roots.
In 2006, Congress created the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, from Pender County, North Carolina, to St. Johns County, Florida.
The way many Black Americans speak is a full language system with its own grammar and history. What to call it is part of the same conversation about names.
Supporters of names like Black American, ADOS, FBA and Soulaan say descendants of the enslaved are a distinct people with their own history, culture and claim to repair, and that one umbrella term can hide that.
Others worry the debate divides Black people who face the same racism, and point out that Black immigrants and their children have long been part of the community and its fights for freedom.
There is no single right answer. When you are not sure, ask people what they call themselves, and use that.
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